Economic swings and roundabouts can cause and create some amazing feelings.
And can also create some amazing lessons.
During difficult times, we tend to “tighten our belts” and become more frugal, trying to squeeze every last piece of value out of every penny that we have to spend.
And that’s a very good habit to get into, and one worth maintaining during “sweeter” economic times.
But during those sweeter times, what we find is that when our businesses are travelling well, we tend to relax our “economic guard” a little…
One of the things I’m seeing during this pandemic is the relaxation of our core principles of scheduling patients and dental treatments.
Because of regional restrictions imposed on the profession as to procedures that can and cannot be performed during different phases of the pandemic, I’m hearing some really poor customer service stories that are literally causing my toes to curl up.
For example:
The dental office phone rings:
Dental Receptionist: “Thank you for calling ABC Dental”
Caller: “Hi. I haven’t been to you before, and I was wondering how much you charge for a scale and clean?”
Dental Receptionist: “Because of COVID-19 we aren’t booking cleans in until mid-late October.”
Caller: “Oh. Why is that?”
Dental Receptionist: “Well, it’s because of aerosols. We’re not allowed to do procedures that generate aerosols.”
……and down the rabbit hole we go….
So what went wrong?
Well, all that the dental receptionist heard when the phone rang was “scale and clean”, and so she immediately launched in to a lecture about what she wanted to say which was:
“We are so overbooked with cleans that we really don’t need your business, so go away.”
The caller hadn’t even asked for an appointment.
But the receptionist got up on her high horse and immediately delivered a sermon….
At no point did the receptionist ask the caller who they were, or when they were last in.
The receptionist had no idea as to when the caller wanted to have their teeth cleaned and how long it had been since their last cleaning.
Nor did she find out whether the caller wanted her teeth to look whiter, or whether the caller might have been a candidate for a smile makeover…
All this receptionist did was to push a prospective appointment of unknown value away to another dental practice.
And the poor schmuck employing this receptionist thinks that business is good because he can’t get anyone in for a scale and clean for four months….
While his business is turning away callers that he has no idea what those callers actually really need.
And before you say to yourself:
“Oh that would never happen in my practice”
believe you me, it’s happening in EVERY practice.
And it’s happening a lot more than you would want to think it is…
But if your appointment book is poorly structured and your front office team are poorly trained [or untrained] on the best ways to answer the phone and the best ways to schedule EFFECTIVELY’ then your practice is really just letting money go disappearing down the drain.
Money that you could use towards new equipment, or new fixtures in your office…
Money that you could pay bonuses with….
Or money you could use to send your kids to a better school, or take your wife away on a vacation….
Sometimes, the not knowing what you don’t know, and being awakened to those facts, is the most painful realisation of them all…
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
There are so many dental practices out there whose staff have so much disrespect for what the person phoning your office and asking what the industry calls a SHOPPER CALL.
And the fact that the dental industry uses this term so freely shows that there are a lot of people out there with very little understanding as to what a caller to your practice who has a price enquiry is really asking.
And that’s because of lack of education.
Either the person who is discussing a “shopper call” isUNKNOWINGLY showing their ignorance as to what a “shopper enquiry” really is, or they are proud of the fact that they don’t really know what the heck they are saying in the first place.
Let’s look at this logically.
When we label a caller to our practice a “shopper”, what we are doing is saying that this person who phones our dental practice and asks what our fee is for a particular procedure, is ONLY calling our practice to see if we are the CHEAPEST PLACE IN TOWN.
When in reality, the real reason that a caller to our practice rings and begins by asking what we charge for a procedure, is because they DO NOT KNOW WHAT ELSE TO ASK.
Just think about it….. when your practice has someone phone up and ask your receptionist:
“How much do you charge for a scale and clean?”
it’s not as if a group of friends are sitting around a phone on a Monday afternoon following their morning tennis session, and are deciding to do a fee survey of all of the dental practices in the local area.
The simple fact of the matter is this:
And it is indeed an absolute certainty…
The person who phones your practice and asks how much you charge for a procedure is doing so because THEY ARE IN NEED OF THAT PROCEDURE.
Remember that fact.
So whenever we hear the question on the phone about “how much do you charge for a [INSERT DENTAL PROCEDURE HERE]?” all we need to do is gracefully sidestep the temptation of blurting out a dollar amount, and start asking the caller someGENTLE fact-finding questions.
When we structure our response in this manner, instead of simply blurting out a dollar amount and hoping our price is ok, it is then that we will truly be able to help and serve our new patient enquiries in a better and more satisfying way for them.
And that’s what it’s all about….
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
One of the things that used to IRK ME big time in life, as well as in business, was watching people with significantly high worth perform menial tasks that they could easily pay someone else to perform, while they then went about doing what they do best [that pays them a significantly higher hourly rate].
Are you guilty as charged?
In your dental practice, as a dentist, are there some duties that you perform that could be easily done by paid staff?
And while those paid staff are doing those duties that you [the dentist] had accidentally been doing that you shouldn’t be doing that you are now delegating to them, you can go back to performing more of those higher paid tasks.
For example, I’ve seen dentists stop drilling teeth [a high paid task that only they can do] and start assembling a matrix band [a low paid task that a dental assistant can do PRIOR to the appointment] while the dental assistant sits back and watches!!
I’ve seen dentists climb ladders in their yards and clean gutters [and put themselves in dangerous and perilous places] when they could have paid someone an amount of money significantly lower than the dentist’s hourly rate to perform that task.
In the same vein…
I’ve seen dentists who aren’t trained as educators and aren’t trained in people skills and aren’t trained as recruiters and psychologists and receptionists.
I’ve seen these same dentists try to do interviews, and to train staff about public relations and appointment making and HR matters and employment, when these dentists really HAVE NO CLUE.
These dentists are trained to repair teeth and remove disease from the oral cavity.
They are not educated in HR, people skills and customer relations, and staff training.
In the same vein, these same dentists would not logically take instruction about cavity preparations and implant placement from someone not educated in those skills.
The thing is that while these dentists are ATTEMPTING to save money and train their employees themselves, all that they are really achieving is training their team members poorly.
At the same time, these dentists are performing a task that they could pay someone more specialised to do while they should be going about the doing of dentistry, which they are trained to do, at a significantly higher hourly rate than the staff trainer charges for her time.
Let’s just go over that again:
When the dentist trains the staff he gets an inferior [read: POOR] result that he surrenders HIS high hourly rate to do.
When the dentist pays a specialist to train his staff he gets a superior [read: BETTER/EXCELLENT] result that he pays someone to do at a lower hourly rate than he gets paid to continue doing dentistry while the staff training is going on…
Is it any wonder Dr Omer Reed used to say that 95% of dentists in the USA reaching retirement age [age 65] cannot afford to retire because they have failed to accumulate sufficient funds to fund a retirement income equal to their dental practice income?
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
One of the dental practice team members at a practice I coach asked me the following question:
“Is it better to send an SMS message, or to phone each patient, to give them the news that we need to move their appointment because we’ve had Department of Health restrictions imposed upon us about what sort of treatments we can provide to our patients during the latest pandemic conditions?”
And I had no hesitation in answering:
“It’s best to phone every one of them.”
Why is this so?
Nobody likes to receive written messages, when a personal spoken message is an option and a viable alternative.
And, the message [above] that we have to let our patients know is one of those messages that I would call a BAD NEWS message.
And messages bearing bad news are ALWAYS best delivered in person, verbally.
And in this case that means getting on the phone.
Because, with a message like this, there will always be questions from the patient.
And an SMS message does not respond to questions as well as well-trained human can respond.
The reality is…
The reality of the situation above is that our message will come as a disruption of plans to our patient.
And with that disruption there will be disappointment.
The purpose of our call is not to simply MOVE THE PATIENT’S APPOINTMENT ALONG, but it is to create a WIN-WIN situation.
At the completion of this call we must leave the patient in a state of pleasure and enjoyment that they have been glad to converse with us, and glad to hear from us, “oh and by the way, we need to move your appointment.”
So that the patient sees that the moving of the appointment is an addendum to the call, although it is the primary reason for the call.
Because the call can be so much more than simply a call that states:
“We need to move your appointment.”
We can ask the patient, when we call, how they are.
We can ask the patient whether they need anything, or whether we can get them anything, or whether they’d like us to do this for them. [This is an OFFER THE OFFERTM type situation, where the making of an offer that is often rejected is actually better than the doing of the offer].
Remember, the person on the other end of the phone is a real live human being with emotions and feelings and concerns.
And they will FEELthe concern for them in your voice when you ring and ask with sincerity:
“How are YOU going?”
Take the time.
Take the time to be a friend.
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Or maybe you might sink to the bottom “like a stone”…
Or you could hire a swim coach and learn from someone who knows how to do it and knows how to teach it…
Life Lesson #2:
In life, there are good people and there are bad people.
You need to choose who you associate with.
Life Lesson #3:
Nobody magically acquires training on their own.
At work, untrained good people do not magically acquire training to become trained good people.
They just remain untrained.
And with time, they transform from being untrained good people to become untrained bad people.
Because they cannot improve without training.
So they deteriorate….
Life Lesson #4:
It is easier and more sensible to create good systems around bad people, than to wait and wait and wait until you find the right “good people”, and then bring them into bad systems, and then try to implement new systems.
Doing this only confuses new, good people.
Setting up your systems first, and then bringing new people into those systems, is far more productive.
Life Lesson #5:
95% of people do not understand Life Lesson #4.
If you are one of the five percent who do understand Life Lesson #4, there is great opportunity in setting up your business next door to a business owned by one of the 95% who do not.
~
The un-swimmer drops…
The penny drops…
You choose…
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
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